The Japanese word for feeling is “kawaii (cuteness),” which is now used worldwide but is difficult to explain because it is a “feeling.” This study used a bottom-up and mix-media qualitative method designed for this research to construct visual models for feelings that arise in everyday life: the “Diverse Joint Method (DJM) for Visual Narratives.” Three researchers worked in parallel to construct three different diagrams from the same 92 kawaiirelated visual images. Based on the common features among the three diagrams, such as “face and expression,” “round and soft,” “action and gesture,” and “space and atmosphere,” we constructed a simulation model, “a visual image of super-kawaii.” By focusing on diverse images based on different perspectives on “kawaii,” we identified new features of this phenomenon, such as “gathering similar ones” and “wrapped ones.”

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This study analyzed a detailed videotaped conversation to examine human interactions. The results of the analysis suggest that “being videotaped” not only restrains the participants’ behavior but was also treated as a resource to develop the interaction. In some segments of the data, the participants paid attention to, or referred directly to, aspects of the environment around them, such as the camera. This finding suggests that the participants were aware that the activity they were engaged in was being videotaped and, hence, that it differed from the preceding activity. In other segments, the participants deduced the experimental problem from the assigned task and jointly constructed to solve it. This suggests that an assigned task may not only constrain the participant but also can be utilized as a potential resource.

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In live sports television commentary, when the announcer and the commentator make comments, occasionally they need to indicate the events promptly which emerge from the ongoing situation on the screen. In this research, we investigated live auto racing television commentaries to describe how they accomplish this task by deploying linguistic resources. We show how the announcer and commentator use deictic expressions with ‘Ko’ particles (or in combination with other interjections like ‘Ah’) and the interjection ‘Hora’ to achieve such exophoric reference. These linguistic resources function in different ways. The ‘Ko’ particle ‘Kore’, which is located at beginning of the utterance, is use to attract others’ attention to the unfolding situation, and show the speaker’s grasp of the situation at the same time, whereas the interjection ‘Hora’ is used to indicate the events that the speaker predicted before. We also show such exophoric referential practices are involved with the embodiments of the announcer and the commentators’ identities in the television commentary.

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Regarding home healthcare, some implements that are not used are left behind in the home of a patient and a caregiver when they are a family. Sometimes, the progression of some illnesses, such as striatonigral degeneration, renders many of the patient’s implements (e.g., wheelchairs) useless. In one family’s case, some implements, such as a remote control, were left behind in the same condition as when the patient had used them, despite the caregiver’s tidiness and high level of organization. This is because the caregiver and patient are both so accustomed to using these implements that they do not consider the latter as being separate from their bodies (i.e., embodiment) and, hence, they continue to use them. The significance of this consideration is as follows: (1) the fact that the patient is not using the implements suggests that the caregiver is not fully aware of the progression of the disease, and (2) the memory of the family and their sense of space and time are maintained through their embodiment of these implements. This is observed through video ethnography. The paper proposes the effectiveness of video ethnography, as well.

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This paper examines the normative aspects of situational awareness in service encounters. A conversation analytic study of service interaction was conducted at an Italian restaurant in Japan to observe how service providers (waiters) judge whether customers have made a choice or not, and how they determine when to approach customers for taking their orders. The results of the analysis showed that waiters normally catch cues that convey that customers have disengaged from the activity of making choices. When waiters fail to notice such cues, customers hail them. This behavior demonstrates customers’ normative preference for being noticed by service providers over hailing them in service encounters.

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The purpose of this study was to examine ways of building and maintaining a positive organizational climate by describing an actual situation. We focused on a ward that had a positive organizational climate in the 1970s. The study’s participants included a chief nurse and two staff nurses who had worked on the same ward. Narratives were gathered through a group interview. The data were analyzed based on four frameworks based on the results of quantitative studies. The results suggest that the chief nurse's sense of control was built on the ideal of a deep consideration for patients, the activities that led to achieving this ideal, and the positive feedback it created. The chief nurse’s sense of control was increased by fostering these characteristics in others. The staff nurses’ sense of control was enhanced by modeling the chief nurse’s behavior. Intimacy among the staff developed through “enough information exchange” and “emotional exchange without reservation.” The sense of control and intimacy among the staff nurses increased morale and improved the atmosphere of the ward.

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Currently, there is an upward trend in the number of Chinese visiting Japan. Many of them who come to study stay on for more than 10 years to work in Japan. This paper uses an interview approach to examine the identity of a male Chinese worker who has been living in Japan for more than 10 years. The life story interview reveals the way his life events have determined his present identity. His identity has been constructed through a series of negotiations with the societies and communities in China and Japan. His identity carved out of his success in studying abroad is affected by the “master narrative” in China. This success is reformed in the context of his life in Japan because underlying it is the influence of constraints experienced while living in another country, his significant others, and their shared “model story” of running a company within the community of Chinese residents. In this paper, I elaborate on how his identity in his quest for work in Japan is constructed by his surroundings.

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This study aimed to describe the process of Japanese sexual offenders in detail. Referring to the grounded theory model, this study qualitatively analyzed the following data from 33 probationers and parolees: (a) the narrative of the offenders, and (b) the content of free-writing sections of worksheets they were instructed to fill in during the special treatment program at probation offices. The resulting model consisted of 15 categories including key precursors of sexual offending such as problems in the offender’s life and cognitive factors. Furthermore, this study revealed that many participants experienced serious and/or multiple problems. Additionally, results indicated that these problems provoked a cycle of coping with the issues, an unstable psychological state, and their perception of said problems, which led to the cognitive factors. The clinical implications of the model for assessment and treatment of sexual offenders were then discussed.

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Children’s peer culture is a stable set of activities or routines, artifacts, values, and concerns that children produce and share in interaction with peers. We observed a preschool class for two years using a peer-culture focused perspective. One particular type of play, “vehicle play”, in which children constructed vehicles using large selflocking building bricks and drove these vehicles, emerged, disappeared, reemerged, and diffused in the class. After reaching a peak that lasted two months, the frequency of “vehicle play” decreased and finally disappeared. This type of play first spread among boys, and then among girls. Perceived attributes of “vehicle play” (i.e., observability, compatibility and trialability), context of preschool lives (i.e., peer relationships, physical and sociocultural environments and play situations in free play time), and teacher’s actions directed at children had an effect on formation and change of “vehicle play”. Individual differences were suggested in participation, in meaning, and in contributions to the formation and change of “vehicle play”. This play resulted in important consequences to individuals and to the preschool class.

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This study focuses on joint attention in small-group learning during lessons in order to analyze the joint action microscopically. In this study, “joint attention” refers to the phenomenon in which two individuals gaze at the same object connectively, which can be an apparatus for microscopic analysis of the relation between communication and positional relation. To contribute to the validity of this concept as an apparatus for research on small-group learning, this study aimed to clarify the function of joint attention in a specific case of social studies in junior high school. The analysis of several acts based on positional relation revealed the followings. 1) Joint attention promoted thinking about the educational contents of the materials on the desks and allowed it to be generated to intercompare how to think mediated by physical things. 2) The function has some important moments, such as the act of pointing, the light/ sound relation, and the identification of the physical things.

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This paper aims at restarting “the way of questioning atmosphere.” Literature review revealed that the quality of atmosphere tends to be ruined through objectification when treated as the theme of study. Therefore the present study posits that the way to ask atmosphere without objectification is fundamental. Specific ways where atmosphere was sought in action of questioning was originated in an experience of the author as participant in an elementary school life where atmosphere was worded and found as what was asked about. These ways differed from general methods in the following two characteristics: 1) the descriptive interpretation of atmosphere was accomplished through the hermeneutic phenomenology of atmosphere to let atmosphere be seen from itself, and 2) the participation in the school life with the author’s own being there and reacting to things constituted “interpretive moment of encountering”. Through this approach, the atmosphere was understood not as static aspect of environment but as having a primordial nature of disclosing and revealing in front of us during the moment of encounter.

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